for 11 July 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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The Third of July Well, I usually like and appreciate your daily commentary, but it's obvious you really got "SUCK"ed in this time - by the history revisionists. The American Revolution is certainly NOT boring! But the way it is presented in modern day text books REALLY SUCKS! They have taken out all the good stuff, because they don't want our kids to know that anyone sacrificed anything for the life of ease they enjoy! The truth is that the patriots should not have won the war at all. Even tho' the British were engaged all over the globe, defending their huge empire, they still should have easily quelled this little rebellion. There were so many "miraculous" things going on that it is more than uncanny that even the casual observer would think it a coincidence that the colonies won. Read about the Battle of New York, for example. Here is a website that will enlighten you to the truth: That site has much valuable history that you can't find in today's texts. One thing it doesn't have is the account from General Howe's personal memoirs, that tells that he sent spies into Valley Forge to ascertain their condition. When the spies returned, they reported that they observed Washington and his whole army kneeling in prayer. Howe said that at that very moment, he knew that the war was a lost cause for him. This really is part of his memoirs! Everything that even smacks of religion or God has been removed from the text books, so it makes the most powerful army in the world (the British) look like a bunch of idiots, losing to the rag-tag continental army. No, the American Revolution was certainly not boring by any stretch of lethargy! Sorry for the long tirade but you hit a nerve. Steve Trageser <sttetc@innercite.com> Well we like your spirit, Steve, but do you really think stirring anecdotes about praying and guilt-inducing reminders that somebody else suffered for their life of ease is what will get schoolkids excited about Revolutionary history? Maybe you're right. Who knows? And what could be a less miraculous engagement than the Battle of New York? (It's unclear whether you're speaking of the disastrous Battle of Long Island or the merely silly Battle of Manhattan.) The Americans were outclassed and outfought, and they were whupped as a result. With all its stories of hard times, spy missions, hair's breadth victories, generals captured in their pajamas (or pyjamas), scalpings and so on, the Revolution certainly offers better candidates for miraclehood than the example you've cited. Sucksters  A Peace of Picasso for Everyone Mr. Pratt, Your piece on the Picasso show in Bogota actually brought a lump to my cynical old throat. In a time when art by recognized masters is not merely another commodity, but one inherently steeped in the foulness of the undeserving rich, it's good to see that there are those committed to art for humans. With enough shows like this one, the neo-Medicis of the art world might just be shamed into decent behavior. yrs, Michael Treece <nonwhiz@earthlink.net> Hey Michael. Your note practically put a lump in my throat, actually — it's not often you reach a reader so. And let's keep hoping for humans and decent behavior. Tim Subject: hey ambi you can run but you can't hide hey bud cool bit about the nazi and guernica when you gonna visit santa cruz sept-oct is best i'll buy ya a cuppa coffee Jack Garman <jackgrmn@cruzio.com> Hey glad you liked the story and wrote, though I can't tell from your message exactly why. And if you look at the contributors' page, you'll see that I'm trying to get a promise of work as part of the process of getting me & my family (including my Colombian wife, who still needs a visa) the fuck outta here before the Blackhawks arrive, so I don't know if I can make it from Sept.-Oct. But I'll tell ya, Santa Cruz sounds like paradise from where I'm sitting so tell me more and maybe a year from now, who knows? A coffee, a beer, a walk in the waves... What does ambi mean? Regards, Tim The Third of July Strangely enough, the third of July is the actual day of American independence. If I remember correctly, after Americans had been celebrating the fourth of July for a number of years, a newspaper editor came across a document that showed definitively that Independence Day was July 3rd. Not wanting to rock the boat, the editor altered this inconvenient declaration to read July 4th. Whether the editor confessed this in a letter, I can't recall, but when the document he altered was analyzed, it was pretty clear that the "3rd" had been rubbed out and replaced by the "4th." (Feel free to sic your fact-checker on that one.) Robert O Peneguy <felixnavidad@mailcity.com> You're close. The Congress voted in favor of independence on July 2 (hence Adams' veneration of that date), and the Declaration was signed on the fourth. But tying a holiday to a specific date is just asking for trouble. This year the Fourth fell on a Tuesday and Suck didn't even get a day off. We should rename the holiday Dio de los Yanquis and move it to the first Monday in July. Sucksters "You could make a case for the American Revolution as the first information war - it was a tax on newspapers and documents that started the trouble...." Do you know, however, why the shooting actually started in Lexington-Concord ("the shot heard 'round the world?")? The British were coming to confiscate the firearms in the armory. And who says the Second Amendment isn't necessary.... Tim Weaver Phoenix, AZ <Tim.Weaver@visitalk.com> No argument here! Lock and load! Dear friends, In your July 3 column you refer readers to an admiring obituary on Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence. I have long held to the view that Rush was an idiot, and cannot resist sending you a newspaper column I wrote on the subject, the first two or three pages of which explain why I say so. Confusion to Tories, Dr. K. Emmott 7lt;kbemmott@mars.ark.com> Relevant passages from Dr. Emmott's column: Also active in the 18th century was Benjamin Rush, a highly respected physician in New England and a signer of the American Declaration of Independence. Rush was taught the received wisdom of the day by his teacher, the noted Scot William Cullen: that all diseases were caused by "morbid excitement caused by capillary tension" and the remedy was bleeding. He also poisoned his patients with calomel (mercury) in order to purge them of "toxins". In 1793, Philadelphia was struck by a yellow fever epidemic which killed 4,000 people. Rush leaped into the fray, taking ten or more ounces of blood at a single session. Of course, most of his patients died, including Rush's own sister and three of his assistants. Saddened, Rush said he wished he had had the nerve to bleed them even more - perhaps he could have saved them. Blinded by his faith in the traditional doctrines he had been taught, he carried on purging, blistering and bleeding his patients. When he died in 1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "For classical learning, I have become a zealous advocate; and in this, as in his theory of bleeding and mercury, I was ever opposed to my friend Rush, whom I greatly loved, but who has done much harm, in the sincerest persuasion that he was preserving life and happiness all around him." Jefferson was a clear-eyed critic of medical fads. In 1807 he wrote; "I have lived myself to see the disciples of Hoffman, Boerhave, Stahl, Cullen, Brown, succeed one another like the shifting figures of a magic lantern, and their fancies, like the dresses of the annual doll-babies from Paris, becoming, from their novelty, the vogue of the day, and yielding to the next novelty their ephemeral favor. The patient, treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes gets well in spite of the medicine. The medicine, therefore, restored him, and the young doctor receives new courage to proceed in his bold experiments on the lives of his fellow creatures. I believe we may safely affirm, that the inexperienced and presumptuous band of medical tyros let loose upon the world, destroys more of human life in one year, than all the Robinhoods, Cartouches, and Macheaths do in a century." Thanks for your input, Dr. Emmott. The admiring obituary we linked to covers the controversy over Rush's methods in considerably greater and more accurate detail than does your column. It was for this reason that we pointed out that obit, with an admonition to the reader to "see if you can do better." And in fact, we don't think you or we or anybody else could have done any better in 1793 than to continue trying to treat the sick in a city where an epidemic — for which no effective treatment existed at the time and for which no cure has ever been discovered — was in the process of killing off thousands of people. Poking fun at old fashioned medicine is always good for a very quick laugh, and we of all people can't object to a cheap shot. However, given that at the time hygiene was unknown and nobody knew germs existed, it's not surprising that Rush's treatment was ineffective. Suck's appreciation of mad doctors is well known, but Rush was not the idiot or martinet you make him out to be; and we're both in luck, because some guy has published an exhaustively detailed, left-handed defense of Rush against the people whose work we suspect you cribbed for your humorous essay. And as for Rush's stands on the issues of the day — in favor of independence, for the US constitution, strongly opposed to slavery, energetic in his efforts to help Philadelphia's African American community — again, we doubt any of our carping readers would have done much better. Finally, a word on your "clear-eyed critic of medical fads." Jefferson, in a letter to Rush himself, voiced his own theories on the yellow fever epidemics: "When great evils happen, I am in the habit of looking out for what good may arise from them as consolations to us, and Providence has in fact so established the order of things, as that most evils are the means of producing some good. The yellow fever will discourage the growth of great cities in our nation, & I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man." Indeed! Always be careful when citing Jefferson, the true Mad Hatter of American liberty. Sucksters |
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![[Tim Cavanaugh]](/fish/staff/images/tim.gif)
![[Phillip Bailey]](/fish/staff/images/phil.gif){kind=small}
